Everybody's doing it...

When I first arrived in Copenhagen at least three separate people told me to watch out for bikes when crossing the road or getting off a bus. At first I shrugged off their advice, thinking to myself that they were exaggerating just a bit to emphasize how environmentally friendly and active the Danes are, but it didn't take me more three blocks to realize that their concerns were completely valid. Copenhagen is a city full of bicycles and although most of the people on these bicycles obey the traffic laws and stop when the little red man lights up there are definitely some rebels out there that will literally run you over on the street. Recent studies estimate that over one-third of commuters bike to work, including the prime minister! Like I said, it is a city that loves their bikes and since I love this city I decided it was about time I got myself a bike. My host family was nice enough to let me use Emma's bike and I have now started biking everywhere. Not only does it cut five minutes off my commute but I also get to experience so much more of this wonderful city. I notice things that I would never have seen by taking the bus or the metro; it's too easy to just put in your ipod and zone out but when you're on a bike you have to take notice. Just on my way into school today I spotted a cute little cafe I want to test out, a charming mural on the side of a kindergarten, a garden that promises to be beautiful in a matter of weeks and grocery store that is having a sale on Somersby through Friday. (Somersby is a delicious cider that I have grown to love and cherish so much that it deserves it's own blog post just to describe how wonderful it is.) So now I have officially developed a liking for (most) licorice, I prefer open-face sandwiches to the kind with two slices, Aqua is at the top of my recently played list and now, I have a bike! Basically I'm Danish. Now if I could only say rødgrød med fløde they would officially let me into the club...

A Danish Whirlwind

Last Thursday I decided to skip my cancer class in order to meet two very important people at the airport--my mom and my sister! And the next four days were jam packed with important Danish things to do, see and eat! We started out Friday morning with a canal tour. It was a little rainy so we were happy to see that the boat was covered but we were still able to see all the major sites: the opera house, Amalienborg Palace, the Little Mermaid, Christianshavn and some more but I had to get off the boat to go to class. Then I met up with them for lunch at Nyhavn 17, an adorable restaurant in Nyhavn. We spent the rest of the day walking around Copenhagen and just enjoying the sites. It was really nice to see my mom and sister and give them a glimpse of my daily life here in Denmark.
Day 2 started off with a tour of Christiania, a small community in Christianshavn that governs itself. It's like a mini Amsterdam in the middle of Copenhagen. You can walk up and down Pusher Street and people are openly buying and selling pot. I think my mom learned a lot from this experience. At one point a dealer offered my mom some hash and she turned to me and asked what it was... Oh, my sweet innocent mother. After Christiania we waited in line for an hour to get into Amalienborg, the palace where the Danish royalty live. They just refinished the crown prince's quarters and they opened it up to the public, so we got to see how royalty live. It was pretty incredible. There was a mix of the old fashioned palace with modern artwork. There was even a mural that had Led Zeppelin and Beatles records incorporated into it. Very cool. After a lunch of Smørrebrød (Danish open faced sandwiches), we finished the day at the Copenhagen Ice bar. It was so much fun! Everything was made out of ice--the cups, the bar, the chairs, the walls. There was even a motorcycle you could ride, but it was a chilly ride.

Day 3 was full of soccer, or should I say fodbold? First, my dedicated fans stood in the cold and watch my soccer game (we won 2-0) and then later that night we went to the FCK vs. Brøndby, the biggest rivalry in the Danish soccer league. The Brøndby got a little crazy and started fires. They even threw a firecracker of some kind onto the field! My mom was very concerned for the keeper's safety-- typical mom. After the game, we went to Sticks N Sushi for a absolutely fantastic dinner.
My last day with my mom and sister was full of shopping! We started in Malmö. After two or three hours shopping in Sweden we caught the train back to Copenhagen. We somehow made our way to Georg Jensen and Royal Copenhagen and after drooling over just about everything in the store we made up our minds and got some fabulous souvenirs. After we were all shopped out we made our way home and it was time to my mom and Caitlin to pack their bags. It was a whirlwind of a weekend and we packed a lot into four days. I hope that they had as much fun as I did!

My mom and Anne on the canal tour

Gusties in Gustav Adolf's Square in SwedenAt the Ice Bar!

Mmmm.... Smørrebrød

Christiania

The Little Mermaid

I am Chelsea

This weekend was quite possibly the best weekend of my life. Seriously, it's going to be hard to top it. Perhaps my wedding or maybe the birth of my first child will be on the same level. What could I have possibly done that was so fantastic? Well, I cheered on Chelsea FC to a 2-0 victory over Stoke City in the quarter-final of the FA cup. Not only did they win but my future husband, Frank Lampard, scored a goal and had an assist. He must have known I was going to be there and decided to show off for me.

So I got home on Friday around 5, did some laundry, repacked my suitcase and left the next morning bright and early. We got into London and the weather was beautiful. It was just my host dad, Jan and me so we walked around Hyde Park, wandered up to Parliament to say Hello to Big Ben and then met some of his co-workers for dinner. Then we met up with my current hero, Paul, who got us tickets for the Chelsea game. He works with Jan and I met him two weeks ago at a pub in Copenhagen where we were watching a Chelsea match. He found out that I was a huge fan and insisted we come to London for a match. Let's just say it didn't take much convincing. The next day was game day! We started off the day with a typical English breakfast and then it was off to Stamford Bridge to cheer on the Mighty Blues. We ate lunch in a restaurant across from the stadium that had a sign in the window, "Chelsea Supporters Only." At first I thought this was a little bit of a joke but when we walked in a police officer stopped us to make sure we were Chelsea fans. They take their soccer really seriously... The game was magical. Everything I expected it to be and so much more. The fans were loud and singing almost constantly. It was a little odd to hear an entire stadium chanting "Come on Chelsea, come on Chelsea, come on Chelsea!" but if we could somehow bring that back to Gustavus I think my game would improve tremendously. As I said, Chelsea went on to win the game 2-0 and now they're in the semi-finals of the FA cup. It was an absolutely fantastic game and an experience that I know I am lucky to have had. Go Chelsea!

An endless amount of sausage and potatoes

Oh man do I have a lot of catching up to do. I'm going to preface this post by saying it's going to be a long one. I suggest taking frequent breaks--get up, walk around, maybe even get a snack. Do whatever it takes to get through it. However, if you get bored halfway through and give up, no hard feelings. Good luck!

So on Sunday I met my Human Health and Disease class at the airport to embark on what DIS calls a Long Study Tour. They emphasize that Europe is our classroom and we can learn more by getting out and experiencing things so every class goes somewhere in Europe to supplement what we've been learning here in Denmark. So after a nice 40 minute plane ride we landed in Berlin and the sun was shining--something I hadn't seen in a very long time. I knew then and there that this was going to be a fabulous week. We spent the afternoon exploring the city via the 1970's-esque metro and tracking down a tasty bratwurst which I ordered in nearly flawless German and then when asked if I wanted ketchup replied "Nej, tak" (Danish for no thanks) Oops!

Our first real day in Berlin began with a visit to the Berliner Dom, the Lutheran version of the Duomo. It was gorgeous inside and out. Then we went to the DDR museum and learned all about life in East Berlin during the communist era. My favorite fun facts: Potty breaks were scheduled into kindergarten classes that consisted of the entire class sitting on bench toilet and no one was allowed to leave until the last kid was finished. Also, nudism was considered to be a form of protest and was therefore fairly common.
If you were at all covered up at a public beach you were definitely the odd man out.

Little German kids sitting on the bench pottyAfter we had a better grasp of a communist lifestyle we went to visit the German parliament building, the Reichstag. This is where we had the most amazing lunch ever paired with an amazing view of Berlin. The dome structure on top is where the restaurant was. You could walk all the way up to the top and from there you could basically see all of Berlin.

The whole group at Reichstag

And to end our busy day we went on a bike tour of Berlin. This was the coolest way to see the city and I learned so much! We saw all the major sites:

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Portion of the Berlin wall that is still standing

Reminder of the largest book burning that happened in Germany. If you look closely you can see the empty bookshelves.

The church on the right was on the right of a large square. It was built by French immigrants and considered to be the most beautiful church in Germany for a while. Well of course the Germans couldn't have their most beautiful church be French so they built the church on the left in the same square but on the left side (below). It is almost exactly the same but is 4 cm taller. Germany-1, France-0.



















Humboldt University where Einstein was a professor

TV tower built by East Berlin to show off communist power. Unfortunately their plan backfired because a huge cross appears when the sun hits the tower and the West saw it as a sign from God to keep fighting for freedom. But now it is the pride of all of German because it's taller than the Eiffel tower and the Germans love beating the French.

The Brandenburg Gate

And the most important Berlin site of all..... the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby off a balcony

Dinner was as typically German as you can get and consisted of potato soup, sausage, sauerkraut and of course, beer. And after dinner we went to the Jewish Museum which documented the history of German Jews. It was really interesting because it was the only time I learned about Jews in Germany and it didn't completely focus on the Holocaust.

Day number two was more academically focused and began with a trip to the gross anatomy lab at a medical school in Berlin. After the professor pointed some things out, we got to explore the cadaver lab for ourselves. It was so cool! The bodies were already expertly dissected so we got to see and feel pretty much everything with no work whatsoever. It was awesome. Then we went to the Museum of Medical History on the same campus and saw some pretty old school medical tools/techniques. The Checkpoint Charlie museum was the next stop on the schedule. It documented the resistance to communism in general but had a large focus on how people sneaked out of East Berlin and into West Berlin. There were cars, suitcases, oil drums and speakers that had been modified to conceal a person. Many people tunneled over. One person made a zip line and got his whole family across. My personal favorite was the man who dressed up as a cow and grazed his way across the border. He is my hero. That night we went to a Vegas meets Cirque du Soleil type show called Qi (pronounce key). It was thoroughly entertaining and including ice skating, a swimming pool, trapeze artists, singing, dancing and ridiculously strong men lifting each other.

Day three started with a tour to a medical research center where we saw the Operating Room of the Future and a 7 Tesla MRI machine. 7 Tesla is more than twice the normal amount of magnetic field used for MRI. If you got close enough you could feel all the metal on you being pulled to the machine. I felt it in the buckles on my boots, the snaps on my bra and even in my retainer. It was a very strange feeling but really interesting to experience. After this we were done with Berlin and it was time to catch our train to Poznań, Poland.

In the morning of Day Four we shadowed a obstetrician and quickly learned that the rules in Poland are a little different than the US. We started by asking the patient questions but then were thrown into a more hands on experience. I personally palpitated a pregnant woman's stomach while other kids in my class took her pulse, blood pressure and found the fetal heartbeat. Again, so cool! After this we had a walking tour of Poznań and learned a little history.

Parish Church--Impressive inside and out, then you find out the marble, gold and dome are all fake. Hard to say if their trickery makes it more or less impressive...

Inside the fake church.
Market square with the town hall in the middle

Monument honoring specific Poznani resistance events to the Soviet control, the first and largest occurring in 1956.

Saint Marc's Palace built by the Prussians in 1910

Monument celebrating the Polish students who cracked the Nazi code. They were math students in Poznan.

Front of the Town Hall

After our tour of Poznan we got a tour of Lech Brewery.
It was really interesting to see the production line and learn about the whole beer making process. The next morning we shadowed a pediatrician. This was less hands on than the obstetrician but still very interesting. Unfortunately for me this meant the end of study tour but luckily for you (I'm impressed you're still reading) it means the end of this blog!